Bizcuits | The Expat Awards

Leanda Lee

It is the season for relatively new business awards. This month the names of winners in the inaugural G2E Asia Awards were published, and in its 4th year the Macau European Chamber of Commerce Awards for Euroexcellence for local enterprises was held. The Business Awards of Macau, in its 6th year, will be awarded in a few months.

Whether to local, foreign, pseudo-local, to individuals or to companies, awards are an opportunity to celebrate achievements and showcase the best of the best, excellence and standards to which others can aspire. In this way they offer a benchmark of sorts.

It is both informative and inspirational to take a look at the winners, what they have done and the path they have taken to reach such levels of recognition. Indeed, quite a few of the small group of awardees are recognised by more than one awarding body: a function of the size of Macau, its insular networks inclusive of judges and the judged, or indeed, just because those particular award-winners shine brighter than anyone else.  Likely the truth lies somewhere between all these, as the common theme in each of these awards is that of the outsider, be it on the panel or among the nominees – with a smattering of local faces and organisations: the sample of nominations is not a broad one.

This month, I was introduced to The Finder’s Expat-preneur Awards 2018 in Singapore. These awards were put together for the first time last year by The Finder, a magazine started by two expatriates to help other expatriates find businesses, schools, services and information about how to live well in Singapore.  In 1993, before the age of the internet, the magazine started out with the idea to answer all those questions about trust-worthy services and ways to navigate the wonders of a new and foreign home that expatriate social groups typically help individuals with. Given the longevity of the magazine, it is a solid enterprise that has met and continues to meet needs of the community.

The Finder’s Awards for Expat-preneurs (a term coined by expatriate academic and award judge, Yvonne McNulty, in 2015) celebrate 23 expatriate business owners who help people “live well in Singapore”. Just that one sentence encapsulates clearly and simply who are included (foreign-born entrepreneurs running successful, expat-owned businesses in or from Singapore), the overall criteria and aims. That transparency, together with system of assessment by a highly expert panel of 3 completely independent judges suggests this is a well-considered, rigorous process grounded in a philosophy of community contribution and celebration.

Macau has many expatriates and non-resident workers active in our midst who are not only busy in businesses but, by necessity in many cases, limit their activity to volunteer work and cultural endeavours. In academic articles a few years ago I described some expatriates who had contributed to Macau under the radar, and that legal constraints upon many of them limit their work. Indeed, most notable in the Singaporean The Finder Awards was the large percentage of women represented. Many of these expat-preneurs had arrived to Singapore as trailing spouses who then saw opportunities and were encouraged to grasp them. As one judge of the Singapore awards said when I queried her on the gender bias, “women tend to be the trailing spouse and therefore the ones that engage in expat-preneur opportunities”. 

The difference in environments in terms of fostering expat-preneurs is that Singapore is very good at assisting start-ups, including foreigners. Our Macau non-resident trailing spouses, for example, are unable to contribute to the same degree and we, the whole community, potentially miss out on so much.

Would it not be fabulous to be able harness those same skills and energy in our own little community? Imagine being able to nominate for Macau’s expat- preneur awards and celebrate diversity beyond gaming and across different types of enterprises.